Karen Olsson (" Up Against Wal-Mart"), a former editor for the Texas Observer, writes primarily about labor and politics for such publications as Texas Monthly, The Nation, and the Washington Post.

Last year the Columbia Journalism Review proÞled Robert Dreyfuss (" The Thirty-Year Itch"), naming him one of the "best unsung investigative journalists working in print." A Mother Jones contributing writer, Dreyfuss is hardly unsung on the magazine's pages, which have featured his investigations of the CIA, NRA, and Philip Morris.

Twenty-Þve-year-old Norwegian-born photographer Jonas Bendiksen (" Living in an Age of Fire") has photographed extensively in the former Soviet republics and in the Middle East.

James Whitlow Delano (" A Tale of Two Chinas") won the prestigious 2000 Alfred Eisenstaedt Award from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism for his photography from China.

Currently the dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, Orville Schell (" A Tale of Two Chinas") has written nine books about China and is a frequent commentator on Chinese issues.

Canadian internist Kevin Patterson (" The Patient Predator") is the author of The Water in Between, a travel book about travel books and about sailing across the PaciÞc Ocean. He lives on Saltspring Island, on the coast of British Columbia, and practices